The Killer She Did Not Know

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Who Killed Roxanne?"

Episode: The Killer She Did Not Know

Host: Charles Dowdy
Date: March 11, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, host Charles Dowdy and investigators revisit how a notorious serial killer, Henry Lee Lucas, became entangled in the still-unsolved 1982 murder of Roxanne Sharp. The episode explores the twists and misdirections that Lucas—and his confessions—brought to the Roxanne Sharp case and others in the Covington area. With input from investigator Stephen Montgomery and Covington Police Sergeant Bart Owenby, the podcast unpacks how Lucas’s fabrications derailed the investigation, obscured the truth, and ultimately hurt more than helped the search for Roxanne’s killer.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Progress and Community Involvement

Timestamps: 00:59–05:33

• Charles introduces the need for community-sourced information, emphasizing that the podcast’s purpose is to generate actionable leads in Roxanne’s cold case.
• Stephen Montgomery: Expresses gratitude for those coming forward, explaining,

  "This is a thousand piece puzzle. It's going to take everybody to put it together." (02:17)

• The hosts encourage anyone with relevant information—no matter how minor or second-hand—to speak up, dismissing fears about liability.
  • “No one's liable. ...If you know something, please come forward and tell us. One small thing can really propel this into a successful prosecution.” — Montgomery (02:59)

2. Challenges in Cold Case Investigations

Timestamps: 03:46–05:33, 07:11–09:52

• Time’s passage complicates solving the crime: evidence degrades, memories fade, people move away or pass on, and the local community is closely entwined, with potential fear of retaliation.
  • “They had to rely on the cooperation of people in that town. And if those people were scared and wouldn't talk ...those investigators really had nothing to go on.” — Montgomery (08:34)
• Investigators did their best given the era’s limitations (e.g., no DNA analysis until years later, technological limitations).

3. The Lucas & Toole Entry

Timestamps: 09:52–15:00

• Charles introduces the explosive involvement of Henry Lee Lucas—a serial killer who confessed to hundreds of murders around the country, temporarily throwing Roxanne’s case (and other unsolved crimes) into chaos.
• Bart Owenby: Recounts how he only became aware of Roxanne’s case in 2010 due to a tip, highlighting the case’s longevity and persistence in local memory.

4. Henry Lee Lucas: His Life, Crimes, and Influence

Timestamps: 13:02–18:59

• Owenby summarizes Lucas’s traumatic upbringing, life of crime, and eventual partnership with Ottis Toole, leading to a cross-country spree of violence and confessions.
  • “His mother was... pretty sadistic... She would make Lucas... watch while she was having these sessions of seeing other men... She was very abusive verbally, physically to both Lucas and his father.” — Owenby (13:41)
• Lucas’s arrest in Texas led to his confession spree, where he eventually claimed responsibility for over 100 murders.

5. Law Enforcement’s Response to Lucas’s Confessions

Timestamps: 18:59–25:21

• The Texas “Lucas Task Force” began interviewing Lucas about unsolved murders nationwide.
• Lucas received special treatment (cigarettes, meals, attention), incentivizing him to continue making confessions.
• Covington authorities were drawn into this effort after Lucas’s confessions touched on local cases, including Roxanne’s.
  • The confessions appeared plausible due to circumstantial “evidence” and local sightings, like priests at St. Joseph’s Abbey believing they gave Lucas money during the timeframe of Roxanne’s disappearance (27:10).

6. Flaws and Failures: How the Confessions Fell Apart

Timestamps: 27:58–36:04

• Owenby criticizes interrogation tactics, explaining how detectives (locally and nationwide) inadvertently fed Lucas details, allowing him to parrot back fabricated stories.
  • “They were feeding Lucas more information... this is all of them, right? This is all of them around the... United States who were interviewing Lucas about their open murder investigations.” — Owenby (28:23)
• Lucas’s claims included picking up Roxanne as a hitchhiker and misleading stories about local crimes, supported by coached identification of crime scene photos and evidence (such as a purse at the scene).
• The Lucas confessions began collapsing after a crafty Dallas detective used a fake case file as a test—Lucas confessed to it, proving he’d admit to murders he clearly did not commit (32:50).

7. Impact and Aftermath

Timestamps: 36:04–37:99

• Once exposed, Lucas recanted thousands of confessions, discrediting law enforcement efforts and devastating the families of victims.
  • “The amount of damage that he did... to the families of these victims across the United States is probably... immeasurable. ...The cases here locally basically got boxed up and shelved.” — Montgomery (36:54)
• Locally, meaningless confessions forced investigations back to square one, notably in Roxanne’s case.

8. Clarifying the Facts: Lucas Wasn’t Roxanne’s Killer

Timestamps: 37:42–38:36

• Stephen Montgomery asserts Lucas could not have killed Roxanne:

  "Henry Lucas and Ottis Toole never picked up Roxanne Sharp. ...Henry Lucas was in California at the time Roxanne Sharp was killed. Ottis Toole claimed that he killed a woman in Arizona... but he actually got a traffic ticket in Florida... two days later." (37:59)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Her story deserves to be told and her crime deserves to be prosecuted. Someone needs to be held accountable for what happened to her.” — Stephen Montgomery (05:09)
• “If you think the Robert Willie story is unbelievable, wait until you hear this.” — Charles Dowdy (11:35)
• “...he had the ability to take information the law enforcement investigators were giving him and turn it around and feed it back to them in a believable story. ...he was the one doing the interviewing, not the detectives. He was reading them like a book and using it to his advantage.” — Stephen Montgomery (36:04)
• “This was not a simple, isolated disaster. The fake Lucas confessions affected people all over the country and took years away from what could have been productive continuations of investigations.” — Charles Dowdy (35:48)
• “Once Lucas got rolling, he went ahead and confessed to other local crimes, too.” — Charles Dowdy (30:29)
• “So it was all a sham. Henry Lee Lucas was a killer. It appears he was not the killer of Roxanne Sharp.” — Charles Dowdy (37:42)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [00:59–05:33] — Charles and Montgomery discuss community involvement and the need for secondhand information.
• [07:11–09:52] — Stephen Montgomery describes the case file, investigation limitations of the 1980s, and the climate of fear in the local community.
• [13:02–18:59] — Bart Owenby presents a biography of Henry Lee Lucas and his crime spree with Ottis Toole.
• [18:59–25:21] — The impact of Lucas's confessions on local and national investigations.
• [27:58–36:04] — Law enforcement's missteps in facilitating Lucas’s confessions, and how journalists and alert detectives unravel the truth.
• [36:04–37:42] — The lasting damage from Lucas’s fabricated confessions.
• [37:59–38:36] — Investigator confirms Lucas and Toole were not Roxanne’s killers.

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Conclusion

This episode delivers a compelling case study in how a cold case can be upended by a serial confessor, negligent investigative practices, and the hunger for resolution. The hosts and guests recall not just the chaos sewn by Henry Lee Lucas, but the importance of facts, patience, and continued community engagement in seeking real justice for Roxanne Sharp.

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For more information or to provide a tip:
Visit whokilledroxanne.com or call Louisiana State Police at 985-635-3167.

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Episode music and closing credits omitted from this summary.

Transcript

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[Charles (North Shore Media Group Host)]

Charles with North Shore Media Group checking in again before we let episode three out of the gate, I'm part of the management team for our small little family owned media company, and I wear quite a few hats. One of those hats is that I host a morning show weekdays on the Lake 94.7. I've done it for years and I really do enjoy it. It is live radio. I cut on the microphone all morning long, not really knowing exactly what I'm going to say, with thousands of people waiting to hear what's going to come out of my mouth. But that no longer intimidates me at all. Producing a podcast week in and week out about an important subject and trying to craft a product that is worthy of that subject, that's scaring me to death. I thought this would be a good time to check in with investigator Stephen Montgomery and see how we're doing. Now, don't get me wrong, I can see the stats on the downloads for the podcast, I see the social media traffic, and again, we thank you for your enthusiastic response to what we're doing. But the purpose of this podcast is to generate information that may help solve what happened to Roxanne Sharp. So again I ask, how are we doing? And I got Stefan right here. So I'll ask the question, how are we doing?

[Stephen Montgomery (Investigator)]

People are starting to come forward with information that maybe they didn't think at the time was important or it's stuff that they had heard or were told over time. But those people are starting to come forward. And this is a thousand piece puzzle. It's going to take everybody to put it together. So I appreciate everyone who's come forward. And there's a lot of buzz on Facebook. I can see that people are tagging other people. And true crime is worth listening to. And certainly when you can identify with people and places, it gains momentum.

[Charles (North Shore Media Group Host)]

What would you say if someone feels hesitant about coming forward because they've known some information for a long period of time and they just simply not sure they want to? Maybe they're worried that they're somehow liable or involved in this thing?

[Stephen Montgomery (Investigator)]

No, no one's liable. And I understand the hesitation and the fear. I think we've talked about that. But now's the time. No one's in trouble. We're trying to figure out what happened. We're trying to figure out who's responsible for her murder. And if you know something, please come forward and tell us. One small thing can really propel this into a successful prosecution.

[Charles (North Shore Media Group Host)]

What if the information is not firsthand? What if it's somebody that was a child and they remember their aunt saying something and it's third hand, second hand information? Does that matter?

[Stephen Montgomery (Investigator)]

It's all valuable to me. I can't tell you how many people I've talked to that say, well, I don't really know anything, but this is just what I heard. And they start telling me something and before you know it, we're engaging a conversation about things that I didn't know anything about.

[Charles (North Shore Media Group Host)]

Talk about the complexity of this crime real quick in the sense that just the amount of time that's passed, the burden or the obstacles that puts in your way.

[Stephen Montgomery (Investigator)]

There are a lot of obstacles. We always run the race with degradation of evidence versus technology. People die, memories fade, locations change. Those are all obstacles that we have to overcome. But something as big as this, that happened at the time, the people that know what happened haven't forgotten it.

[Charles (North Shore Media Group Host)]

What would you say to someone who said, you guys have had all this time to solve this crime. You hadn't been able to do it. I'm not coming for it because you're certainly not going to be able to solve it.

[Stephen Montgomery (Investigator)]

Now, I don't blame someone for feeling like that and I know that that is out there. But if you listen to this podcast and you see the crazy twists and turns that the investigators dealt with, maybe you'll understand why it's taken so long.

[Charles (North Shore Media Group Host)]

What is it going to take to solve? Roxanne's crime. If you were going to simplify it and just answer that question, what is your answer?

[Stephen Montgomery (Investigator)]

It's going to take all of us to come together. It's going to take physical evidence, it's going to take witness information, it's going to take technology. It's going to take a little bit of everything to make this happen.

[Charles (North Shore Media Group Host)]

I mean, if there's one thing that the Internet response has shown us is that Roxanne had people that loved her and that do want justice for her.

[Stephen Montgomery (Investigator)]

Yeah, I was surprised at the amount of people who do remember her personally and do remember her story. Her story deserves to be told and her crime deserves to be prosecuted. Someone needs to be held accountable for what happened to her. And will it take courage for someone to come forward, step forward with what they know? Yes, it will.

[Podcast Narrator / Disclaimer Voice]

The following is a production of North Shore Media Group. Any individuals mentioned in this podcast are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. This case remains an active, ongoing investigation and all discussions are based on publicly available information, investigative updates, and legal proceedings where applicable. The goal is to seek justice, provide awareness, and encourage the public to come forward with any relevant information. This podcast does not make any allegations of guilt against the individuals discussed and is intended for informational purposes only. Do you recall where you left the body?

[Stephen Montgomery (Investigator, continued)]

I left it by interstate.

[Charles (North Shore Media Group Host)]

That's audio from one of the actual interviews of local authorities with Henry Lee Lucas. The audio is terrible and we may read from some of the transcripts eventually, but I can't play much of the audio here. Investigator Stephen Montgomery just spoke about the crazy twists and turns in Roxanne's story. This episode is about another one of them. In episode two, we talked about Robert Willie and how the notoriety of his crimes kind of hovered around the periphery of Roxanne's death. And I want to pause right here and talk about where the investigation stood at this point. I mean, there's not a lot of press about it from those days. Was anything being done at this time? Here's Stephen Montgomery.

[Stephen Montgomery (Investigator, continued)]

I don't think that the inability to solve this case has anything to do with the effort of the detectives who worked on it. When I got the case file In April of 2017, it was well over 500 pages of documents. And the first thing I had to do was I had to break it down and categorize it, see what we had to work with. And, you know, they had reached out to the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office to crime Lab. They had done serology, which was a precursor to DNA DNA wasn't used in court till 1984. So that wasn't even on their mind when this occurred. You know, they did fingerprinting, and they had over 150 interviews in the case file that they had conducted. So they did everything that they could do with what they had to work with at that time. And the real value for me was in the hundred or so pages of handwritten notes by the investigators who worked on this case. You know, they were very detailed, and they contained things that probably at the time they didn't see as important. But looking back now, things we know that they didn't, those notes became extremely important. And at the time that all of this was going on, you know, no cell phones to look at, no video to gather. They had to rely on the cooperation of people in that town. And if those people were scared and wouldn't talk and were afraid to give up information against their neighbor or against someone that they feared retaliation from, they kept their mouth closed. And those investigators really had nothing to go on. And in that ozone area, it's a tight knit group to start with. You throw in that people are related just because one of them goes off to prison. They've got cousins and brothers and mamas and daddies. So the fear of retaliation was a real thing back then. And still to this day, it does exist.

[Charles (North Shore Media Group Host)]

Donald Sharp said the Willie case simply sucked the air out of everything else at the time. Well, there was nothing subtle about Henry Lee Lucas. He barged right into the center of Roxanne's murder investigation. Lucas was a monster. There are books, a Netflix documentary. He wreaked havoc wherever he went. It sounds crazy to say it, but this episode is about the second serial killer involved in Roxanne's story. Well, if you want to split hairs, if you add in accomplices, there are about four of them. So we're going to talk about Henry Lee Lucas, but only as he pertains to Roxanne Sharp. It is really easy to go down a rabbit hole on Lucas, and we're going to talk about him a lot in this episode, but by the end, I think you will understand why. Once again, here's Stephen Montgomery.

[Stephen Montgomery (Investigator)]

One of the real mysteries about this

[Narrator / Interviewer]

investigation is the night before Roxanne went missing. She came home and her mother described her as being upset, and she told her something big was going to happen. But she didn't elaborate on what that was. And the next day she got up, she left the house, dropped out of school without an explanation and never returned home. And she was Seen here and there after that. And she told a friend in the neighborhood that she was going to go

[Stephen Montgomery (Investigator)]

away for a while, but she didn't

[Narrator / Interviewer]

say why or where she was going. So when Henry Lucas was arrested and he was questioned about how they met Roxanne Sharp, he said she was a hitchhiker and they just picked her up.

[Charles (North Shore Media Group Host)]

So if Robert Willey created smoke around Roxanne's case, Henry Lee Lucas created an outright forest fire. When it came to solving Roxanne's crime. Anything associated with Robert Willie pales compared to what happened next because it did not just affect Roxanne's case. Let me introduce you to Covington police sergeant Bart Owenby. He's going to take us in a whole new direction. If you think the Robert Willie story is unbelievable, wait until you hear this.

[Bart Owenby (Covington Police Sergeant)]

So I was born in 76. She was found. Her murder actually happened in 1982. So I wasn't even around at that time. You know, I was still a kid. So when I first started, I didn't know about Roxanne sharp until really 2010, when a gentleman came forward who said he had some information about, you know, he may have some information about the case. So that's kind of how, you know, I became aware of the. Well, really, you know, Roxanne Sharp kind of always. Her name came up here and there, But I really didn't pay attention to it because, you know, it was before my time. That's when I kind of, like, had an interest in it and became aware of the, you know, kind of the facts of the. Of the case.

[Charles (North Shore Media Group Host)]

So we already know plenty about Roxanne's case. A young girl from Covington whose body was found near the fairgrounds, A case that had produced little in the way of leads and was already frustrating investigators. Well, her case was about to interact with a killer on the national stage.

[Bart Owenby (Covington Police Sergeant)]

During that time, you know, the early 80s, there was an individual that became known throughout the United States in law enforcement. Right. And his name was Henry Lee Lucas. And I'm sure a lot of the people who listening to this are familiar with Henry Lee Lucas and Otis Toole. They were a big deal back in that time. You know, they got a lot of publicity just because of what they did and what they were saying.

[Charles (North Shore Media Group Host)]

Yeah, it would be very easy to get bogged down with Lucas. There's a lot there. Sergeant Owenby does a good job with this summary of who Lucas was and what he did.

[Bart Owenby (Covington Police Sergeant)]

Let's just give you some background of this, of this individual. He was born in Virginia, I think, in around 1836. Born in Virginia. He died in prison in March of 2001. He was ended up, I think, actually convicted. Right. I think he was actually convicted of 11 people. So he was born in Virginia. He was a poor. His family was poor. His mother was. Mother was a prostitute. Right. They grew up in Virginia in this. This little log cabin. His father ended up. I think his father lost. His father was in the railroad business. He ended up losing both of his legs in some kind of railroad accident. So his father was an invalid, couldn't help much of the family. So it sounded like, from what I've read them, you know, the mother was kind of the sole provider there. And, you know, she. She was pretty sadistic herself. So she would, you know, from what I've read, she would make Lucas, you know, watch while she was having these sessions of seeing other men, sleeping with other men. And, you know, she was very abusive verbally, physically to both Lucas and. And his father. So really sustained a pretty significant injury when he was young because of her. Right. If you've seen pictures of Lucas and in the media, newspaper clippings, booking photos, he's got an eye that droops. So he actually, you know, that was. That was the cause of his mother's abuse at some point when he was a child. So that kind of laid the foundation. I'm not a psychologist, but I would assume this kind of laid the foundation of his behavior when he. When he got older. Right. So moving on, he was in and out of trouble as a young kid and teenager. So I think one of his first arrests was in Virginia. And, you know, he's in it, like I said, in and out of jail. So I think one of the first murders attributed to him was actually his mother. He was arrested in Ohio for killing his mother in Michigan in the 60s. Right. So he was sentenced to 40 years in the Jackson State Penitentiary. And due to his actions while incarcerated, they sent him to. They admitted him to a state hospital. Right. Due to overcrowding in the prison system at that time, he was released early. So he was released in the 70s. So after he gets out, 1971, it didn't take him long to reoffend. Right. He was sentenced to another five years in prison for attempt and kidnapping of a juvenile gunpoint. I. I haven't been able to find a whole lot of details around surrounding that arrest. But anyway, so he gets out of jail, he ends up meeting his. He ends up meeting his partner, who's Otis Tool in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1976 from what I've read. They, you know, they also insinuated that he was also romantically involved in with Otis Tool as well. So him and Otis hook up, they hit the highways, start hitchhiking, traveling across the United States, wreaking havoc from what I've read. So they ended up moving in with Toole's mother in Springfield, Florida in 1978, where Lucas ends up meeting Tool's niece, Frida Powell. But she goes by Becky, right? At the time, Becky was mentally handicapped, right? So Lucas ends up taking a liking to, to Becky. Well, Lucas and Becky end up hitting the road. They move out of, they move out of the house with Tool and Tool's mother. So they start traveling the states, hitchhiking, finding odd jobs when they can. They end up traveling to California where one of Lucas's employers hooks him up with his in laws. Lucas starts doing odd name jobs for this 82 year old named Kate Rich. Things were going all right. They were, you know, going to church here and there and kind of stable for a few months. Well, it didn't take long for things to go sour over there. So Lucas ends up getting arrested in Texas, 1983 in Texas by a Texas Ranger on a gun charge and held on a probation warrant in a local jail in Texas. I think that was George around Georgetown. And so Becky and, and Kate, he's by himself when he gets picked up, right? So they got him in jail on this probation warrant while he's in there. Word had got out that the family members start making a fuss. Kate's family members, right, they start making a fuss because Kate goes, she, she disappears, she goes missing and they suspect, they suspect Lucas of having something to do with that.

[Podcast Narrator / Disclaimer Voice]

Right?

[Bart Owenby (Covington Police Sergeant)]

So word gets out to the authorities. Texas Rangers picks him up in Texas, holds him on the gun charge while he's being held, they question him, they start questioning him about this disappearance, Right. Well, he ends up confessing to both Kate and Becky's death. So during his arraignment for the murder of Kate in Williamson County, Texas, you know, he's in the courtroom and the judge is, they're going through the motions and all that. Well, Lucas makes some comments like, hey, what are we going to do about these other hundred murders that I'm responsible for? Right. So of course that kind of shuts everything down. The judge is like, okay, well we need to figure this out, right? That's around when the Lucas Task Force was formed in Texas.

[Charles (North Shore Media Group Host)]

So keep in mind this podcast is about Roxanne Sharp, not Henry Lee Lucas. But what a staggering prospect for those officials in Texas. They know this guy was a monster. Now they have to reach out countrywide to other investigators mired in their own unsolved murder cases. The. This was the 80s, not today. Think about just the communication hurdles at that time. And then if you're that frustrated investigator somewhere else around the country and you get a call from Texas.

[Bart Owenby (Covington Police Sergeant)]

So they form this task force with the objective of they need to start facilitating some interviews with detectives around the United States about these different unsolved murder investigations, right? So they're going to facilitate these interviews right there in Georgetown, Texas. So word gets out, different agencies from around the United States start coming to see Lucas, right? And presenting him with their open murder investigations, right? What's kind of feeding Lucas is, you know, he's. He's not being treated like the rest of the inmates, right? Sheriff's pulling them out, giving them cigarettes, getting them coffee all the time, buying them milkshakes, buying them food. He's got this incentive, right, Just to keep talking, right? So these investigators start interviewing him. And. And Lucas, from what I understand, had this pretty uncanny ability to kind of read people, right? So he. He could kind of see which direction they were headed and kind of knew what to say to make them happy, to make the people who were interviewing him happy. This kind of leads into how Saint Tammany authorities get involved. There's this. There's this meeting, and there's this meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, with an organization called ROCIC at the time, it's a regional organized crime information center, right? So what they do, it's kind of like an information sharing meeting, right? From different detectives from all over the nation come and attend these meetings, and they kind of. They go over different crime, you know, crime trends that are happening around the United States, different gangs, organized crime members. Technology back then is not what it is right now. So information sharing was kind of. It was kind of hard to do at that time without the Internet. So they would actually have to meet in person, right, to discuss all this stuff. St. Timothy Parish detectives are at this meeting, and during this meeting, they're made aware of, you know, what Henry Lee Lucas and Otis Tool are telling law enforcement authorities, right, that they might be responsible for a lot of these open murders across the United States. So during this. During this meeting, this RLCIC meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, and this was in February of 84, right? So this is a couple years after Roxanne was found had been murdered. So during this meeting, some information comes up that these two Might be responsible for a deputy's murder. Right? So as you probably know, St. Tammany has had very few in the line of duty deaths, right? And this, this was one of them. I don't. May have been the first one. His name was Sergeant Lewis Wagner, and he was killed in 1978. He was found shot to death in a driveway of a funeral home right outside of Covington on Highway 21, 1978. While they're at this meeting, they get information that, hey, they might know something about Sergeant Lewis Wagner's murder. So they start arranging some, some interviews, right, with the, with the task force that the Texas Rangers and this Sheriff Butwell are facilitating. So during the first interview with Honest Tool, they bring up Roxanne Sharp and he odys tool makes a comment that, hey, did she, Was she found with her socks on? And the significance of this is Lucas Lucas had confessed to the murder of Deborah Jackson, who was killed in Georgetown, Texas in 1979. She was found, I believe, in a drainage ditch nude and with just her socks on. Right? So that's kind of why I believe Toole made that comment. Hey, you better talk to. You better talk to Henry about this, right? So one of their next interviews was with Henry Lee Lucas. They get Henry Lee Lucas and they're interviewing him and they start asking him about the Louis Wagner murder and Roxanne Sharp. So he ends up confessing to the Lewis Wagner murder. Right. Well, the problem with that Lewis Wagner murder was that a guy by the name of Willie Robert Willie had already confessed to that crime a few.

[Charles (North Shore Media Group Host)]

A couple years before that, Henry Lee Lucas was impacting all kinds of North Shore investigations. Here's Stephen Montgomery explaining.

[Narrator / Interviewer]

Explaining how when Robert Willey confessed to the murder of Deputy Lewis Wagner, he

[Stephen Montgomery (Investigator)]

also named three accomplices and he testified against them in the grand jury.

[Narrator / Interviewer]

They were indicted, but by the beginning of 1983, suddenly changed course and

[Stephen Montgomery (Investigator)]

said that he had lied about the other three people's involvement and that he would not testify against him in the upcoming trial.

[Narrator / Interviewer]

So the district Attorney's office had no

[Stephen Montgomery (Investigator)]

choice at that point but to drop the charges against the other three men.

[Narrator / Interviewer]

And although Willie never denied his involvement,

[Stephen Montgomery (Investigator)]

the case against them was dismissed.

[Narrator / Interviewer]

But when Henry Lucas came along and then he confessed to killing Deputy Wagner, well, then Robert Willie recanted his confession as well.

[Charles (North Shore Media Group Host)]

Now remember, Robert Willie had confessed to being present with others at the murder of Deputy Lewis Wagner. Now all of a sudden, their case for the Wagner murder was. Loses its legs and they have a killer in Texas confessing to that crime. Local law enforcement talked to Lucas and it wasn't long before they were asking him about one of their other unsolved murders.

[Bart Owenby (Covington Police Sergeant)]

During one of these interviews, you know, they're kind of laying out, they're kind of asking him about the 1982 murder of Roxanne Sharpen. So they're asking him, do you know anything about this girl during the interview? You know, Lucas is kind of dancing around it, kind of very non committal to his knowledge of it. Right. Well, some subsequent interviews were done with Lucas about Roxanne Sharp. So Lucas is, you know, they're telling about this, this girl, where she was found, the time of year she was found. And Lucas is, you know, he's saying, yeah, probably this is, sounds like something me and you know, Odis would, would be responsible for. During one of the subsequent interviews, he's more, he's more confident now. Lucas is more confident and he's, you know, he's telling the detectives, yeah, it's, we definitely, it's definitely one we did when I was traveling with Otis and Becky. This is kind of what he's, what he tells the detectives, right? He's claiming they, they saw this girl on the side of the, on the side of the highway. They, she was hitchhiking, they picked her up. So what's, what's kind of odd or just, it's, it's not adding up is, you know, he's claiming they loaded her up in the, in the car and they, they traveled with her several hundred miles. Right. And so the information they had at the time, the detectives, they, they pretty much knew according to, you know, the time when she was reported missing. And witnesses that had kind of seen her, you know, here and there around town, they just, they knew that she didn't travel far from the time she was missing until, you know, she was found. So, but you know, it's, that's one of the points or the facts that they kind of sounds like that a detective's kind of dismissed at the time, you know, for whatever reason.

[Charles (North Shore Media Group Host)]

Now there are other things that gave some credence to Lucas actually being on the North Shore around this time.

[Narrator / Interviewer]

One of the things that gave Lucas story credibility in 1985 is that priests came forward from St. Joseph's Abbey in Covington and said that on February 9, several days before Roxanne's body was found in 1982, two transients showed up at the abbey and they were given a $20 handout. And he thought that Henry Lucas was likely the person that he had given the money to.

[Stephen Montgomery (Investigator)]

When they followed up with him sometime

[Narrator / Interviewer]

later, he was starting to have doubts about that, and he actually retracted that statement.

[Charles (North Shore Media Group Host)]

Even with all that, though, Sergeant Owenby says the extraordinary situation led to some lapses in judgment.

[Bart Owenby (Covington Police Sergeant)]

When you start your careers, a detective, you know, you're getting your experience, you're getting knowledge from more seasoned detectives. It's kind of like, you know, interview Interrogation 101, where you don't. You don't want to lead the person you're talking to, Right. You just kind of want it to happen organically. Right. You ask them, hey, you know anything about this? You know, they're going to say yes. No, they say, yeah, maybe. Well, you just.

[Stephen Montgomery (Investigator, continued)]

You.

[Bart Owenby (Covington Police Sergeant)]

You get them to explain it in their own words. Well, you know, how do you know about this? But the detectives seemed like they were feeding Lucas more information and not. Not just our detectives over here, the local authorities. I'm just. This is. This is all of them, right? This is all of them around the. The United States who were interviewing Lucas about their open investigate, their open murder investigations. So while they're sitting there talking to him, you know, they're. Hey, does this look familiar? Just showing them kind of pictures of the. Of the crime scene where she was found, right? Different pieces of evidence found at the crime scene. Hey, could this, you know, does this look familiar? Lucas kind of picks up on that, right? So one in particular photograph that kind of sticks out is she was found next to what we know now as the Covington Fairgrounds. You know. Sure. It didn't look like it does now. Back then. It was more. More overgrown. You know, the businesses weren't there. But what was there was part of the fairground, what was called the Dixie Trail Ride back then. Right. So from an aerial photograph, from an aerial view, it kind of resembles a racetrack, right? It was. It was a dirt. A dirt track back then. So he's looking at these photographs and he's like, well, yeah, I think. I think she was killed near a racetrack or something like that. Right? Well, he. He's looking at the photograph, right? So the detectives are like, yeah, yeah, Could. Yeah. Could it be the. You know, the fairgrounds? That's kind of a.

[Podcast Narrator / Disclaimer Voice]

No, no.

[Bart Owenby (Covington Police Sergeant)]

Right. He ultimately, he identifies a purse that was found at the crime scene. But he's.

[Stephen Montgomery (Investigator, continued)]

He's.

[Bart Owenby (Covington Police Sergeant)]

He's telling the detectives that belong to Becky. He's saying, Becky, you know, after that, after they committed the murder, Becky swapped out the contents from her. Her purse into. Into Roxanne's purse, and she Actually took Roxanne's purse away from the scene. They. When they left. So they get into, well, how did you. You know, how did y' all kill her? He originally says he shot her, but possibly strangled her.

[Kiana (Shopify User)]

Then.

[Bart Owenby (Covington Police Sergeant)]

Then at the end agrees that hit her over the head with something to kill her.

[Charles (North Shore Media Group Host)]

We'll get to that purse in the next episode. But put yourself in that room. You have local murder cases that have frustrated law enforcement. You have a persuasive serial killer telling you he committed the crimes. And you heard what Sergeant Owenby said. Law enforcement from around the country were diving into his confessions. And here in southeast Louisiana, once Lucas got rolling, he went ahead and confessed to other local crimes, too.

[Bart Owenby (Covington Police Sergeant)]

So, you know, I can. I can get into some of the murders that were attributed to. To him and Toole at the time. So some of the murders that came to light in some of those interviews that he was responsible for. So there was a. There was a Slidell woman that was killed in June of 1978, and an individual named John Mutter. In July of 1979, he was found robbed and severely beaten on a Covington street corner. Right. Of course, the Roxanne Sharp murder. And another individual named Kenneth Lee Broyle, 50, from Slidell, he was found robbed and shot to death at a little local motel in Slidell called Kings Inn.

[Podcast Narrator / Disclaimer Voice]

Right.

[Bart Owenby (Covington Police Sergeant)]

This was in 82. And then Ruth Manguno, she was 28 at the time. In 1983. She was from Folsom.

[Charles (North Shore Media Group Host)]

Great. All around the country, law enforcement were able to finally provide answers about some of their toughest unsolved murders until it simply came to be too much to believe. And finally, a few people began to earnestly question the information Lucas was feeding

[Bart Owenby (Covington Police Sergeant)]

to the task force back in Texas. Right. The task force started facilitating a lot of these interviews with other law enforcement. A journalist got word, and he. He kind of inserted himself in and, you know, had an interest in this tool. And. And Lucas, his name was Hugh Ainsworth. I don't know if he was an independent journalist at the time, but he ended up hooking up with or collaborating with the Dallas Times Herald at that time. So he actually set in with law enforcement on a lot of these interviews that were taking place in Texas with these other law enforcement agencies. So after. After a bunch, he started getting a little curious.

[Podcast Narrator / Disclaimer Voice]

Right.

[Bart Owenby (Covington Police Sergeant)]

Like, I just. This sounds a little fishy. Some of the things. Well, he just. He just saw. He just observed what was going on.

[Stephen Montgomery (Investigator, continued)]

Right.

[Bart Owenby (Covington Police Sergeant)]

And the information that he was being fed by all these other areas agencies, and he was just like, man, I, I just don't know about this, right? So another part of the story is one of these other agencies that got word of, of Lucas's confessions, they were out of. It was a female detective actually out of Dallas. She, she went down and kind of, she was smart enough not to feed Lucas any information, right? She was more of an observer. So she sat in and she listened. Right? After she got an earful, she went back and reported to her supervisors what, what she heard. And they were like, this sounds a little, this sounds a little fishy. I don't know about all this. So they came up with a plan to, we're going to set some bait out there and we're going to kind of, we're going to kind of see what he's about. And, you know, if this, if this, if he's for real. So they came up with the idea of creating a fake case file, right? So they put together a fake murder, a murder file, right? They just started throwing random photographs in there, witness statements, and just building up a, a fake portfolio, a case file, murder case, right? So she was instructed to go back down there and just, you know, hey, look, get him in the interview room and just, you know, start talking to him and boom, present him, present him with this, with this murder and see if he, see what he says about it. Well, that's to be expected. Of course, when she starts asking him about this fake murder, right, he's, he chimes up and he's like, yep, yeah, it sounds like something we did. And. Yeah, we sure did. And, you know, so that's kind of what knocked that first domino down, right? And it all just started crumbling. This whole debacle just started kind of crumbling after, after that, right? So she goes up and reports what she, what she finds to her supervisors and this, this journalist, Hugh Ainsworth ends up finding out about it, right? Which he kind of suspected on his own, but he gets with the Dallas Times Herald, they come up with this article, this story, right? And they. Against the will of a lot of the, the authorities, especially in Texas, right? The Rangers and the sheriff, but, well, he, they publish it and it just goes to shit after that. So after Henry Lee Lucas finds out about it, he starts recanting about, he starts recanting all these, all these confessions that he had made to the law enforcement prior to that, right? And so, and you know, the unfortunate thing about it is I'm sure a lot of indictments were probably made on his confessions, right? I would have to assume some arrests were made too, right? You know, families. It gave. A lot of families lost hope, you know, because, you know, some of these, you know, they thought they had closure, I guess, and then they come to find out that, you know, this is all a sham, right?

[Charles (North Shore Media Group Host)]

This was not a simple, isolated disaster. The fake Lucas confessions affected people all over the country and took years away from what could have been productive continuations of investigations. Here's Stephen Montgomery.

[Narrator / Interviewer]

Henry Lucas might have been crazy, but he was crazy like a fox. He had the ability to take information the law enforcement investigators were giving him and turn it around and feed it back to them in a believable story. And, you know, during those interviews, he was the one doing the interviewing, not the detectives. He was reading them like a book and using it to his advantage. And at the end of the day when, you know, when it all fell apart, he had spent several years traveling the country, eating cheeseburgers, drinking milkshakes, getting preferential treatment. He wasn't treated like a regular prisoner, and that's all he wanted. And when that train went off the tracks, he just recanted all of his confessions. And the amount of damage that he did to not only the cases, but to the families of these victims across the United States is probably. Is immeasurable. In my mind, I knew that the cases here locally basically got boxed up and shelved. He had left such a bad taste in the mouths of prosecutors, the judicial system. It just. I don't think they know what to do at that point.

[Charles (North Shore Media Group Host)]

So it was all a sham. Henry Lee Lucas was a killer. It appears he was not the killer of Roxanne Sharp. I asked Stephan Montgomery if he thought there was any chance that a hitchhiking Roxanne ever got into a vehicle with Henry Lee Lucas.

[Stephen Montgomery (Investigator, continued)]

Henry Lucas and Ottis Toole never picked up Roxanne Sharp. A group of determined investigative reporters, including Richard Angelico, locally dug into Henry Lucas whereabouts and his confessions. And Henry Lucas was in California at the time Roxanne Sharp was killed. Idis Toole claimed that he killed a woman in Arizona on February 11, right around the same time she was killed. But he actually got a traffic ticket in Florida on February 13, two days later.

[Charles (North Shore Media Group Host)]

When I started this podcast, I told you that I knew how it would start. I knew some of what would be in the middle, and I had no idea how it would end. Well, we're into the middle now. We've had an episode about Roxanne, one about Robert Willie, and this one about Henry Lee Lucas. Roxanne's bad luck did not end on the night she ran into whoever murdered her. These two killers impacted the investigation that could have brought her justice. In the next episode, we're going back to the beginning. We're going to get into the crime scene and discuss what officers found where she died 40 plus years ago. We're also going to talk about that purse that Henry Lee Lucas mentioned. The purse found a month after Roxanne's body was discovered. That and more in the next episode of who Killed Roxanne?

[Podcast Narrator / Disclaimer Voice]

Who Killed Roxanne is a North Shore Media Group production. New episodes drop weekly. Original music by Cresley Calura Connect with the podcast [e-mail] if you have a tip or information for Louisiana State Police, call 985-635-3167 or email northshorecoldcasea.gov.

[Musical Artist / Song Performer]

Every good thing I do. Gives me something to lose. Every year that goes by I'll lose what catches your eye what if I'm not who I say I am? What if it doesn't work out? What if I started the drought? What if I'm out of the things that make you want me? What if I'm not who I say I am and I'm scared to admit. Then what if this is as good as it gets? What if this is as good as it gets? I'm feeling like you don't need me maybe you don't see me me Am I talking just to talk? What if I'm not who I say I am. Cuz I'm scared to admit. That maybe this is as good as it gets maybe this is as good as it gets.